One of the biggest challenges for brands looking to work with bloggers is figuring out who to work with and how to measure success. In the realm of paid blogger partnerships, Style Coalition's latest innovation offers an effective way to not only indentify bloggers that are a brand fit, but track an entire campaign through integrated analytics. This new offering comes just months after Style Coalition, the leading influencer marketing platform in the lifestyle vertical, announced its online video channel, and expansion to include a shelter vertical as an extension of their existing partnership with Hearst Digital Media. Currently, Style Coalition’s network includes 50 of the top fashion, beauty and home décor bloggers with a combined reach of over 5MM monthly unique visitors.

Subscription-based service with proprietary algorithm

In short, it's a bit like a blogger matchmaking service and like matchmaking, or its modern counterpart, online dating, the SCX Influencer Exchange is a subscription based service that uses Style Coalition’s proprietary algorithm to measure each influencer's overall media reach. Influencers in this case are "individuals who have successfully built a significant following across a variety of social media channels including their own blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Pinterest." Subscribed brands are able to search the database and hyper-target individual lifestyle influencers, view their analytics, rates, select services, book campaigns and measure results. Yuli Ziv, Founder and CEO, Style Coalition explains, "all social APIs and Google Analytics connected through SCX gives us access to the most accurate, live data on influencers' actions and the results these actions produce. SCX collects multiple data points (re-tweets, likes, re-pins, comments) and analyzes them as a whole, providing a complete picture for a campaign."

So far, Style Coalition has invited a select number of brands and agencies to beta-test the offering, and the results have been positive.

The current lack of a centralized blogger database, inconsistency of rates, inability to verify stats and measure campaign success takes valuable resources away from creating and managing the overall strategy for clients. SCX solves all of these problems and allows agencies to focus on what they do best without wasting resources on sifting through blogrolls, researching stats, negotiating rates and drafting contracts. Shenan Reed,Chief Media Officer, Morpheus Media.

Request an Invite

While the service's first priority is existing clients and partners, and the full suite of features is set to debut in Q2, brands and agencies are encouraged to request an invite to the early access as new accounts are being released weekly. And, if you are a smaller agency or brand with a limited budget, Yuli had this to say; "Since the inception of Style Coalition our focus was on Fortune 500 brands. We are also lucky to have partners at Hearst who allow us access to these companies and their agencies. SCX will certainly allow Style Coalition to work with a wider range of brands once we introduce different subscription levels, however...top priority right now is listening to our clients and improving our product to fit their needs, we want to build the tools they need to be their go-to platform for booking influencers for their campaigns, which is where we see the most revenue opportunity." So, much like finding the one, a bit of patience is in order.

In the meantime, visit SCX Influencer Exchange to get a sense of how things works. And good news for bloggers, the platform is considering new members who have experience working with brands, particularly those in other lifestyle categories and globally.

About the author: Crosby

Known as the "fashion publicist's most powerful accessory," (SD-UT) and the "West Coast 'It' girl of fashion PR," (YFS Magazine) Crosby Noricks is a brand strategist, author and founder of PR Couture. Crosby was included in the iMedia 25 Class of 2012 Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators, and enjoys helping fashion and lifestyle brands connect with their audiences in meaningful and creative ways.

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Meet Crosby Noricks

Hi. I'm Crosby, Founder of PR Couture, Fashion Brand Strategist and PR Girl Mentor. I care about supporting and celebrating fashion publicists as well as helping companies connect with their audiences in more meaningful ways. Recently, iMedia included me in their annual list of 25 Internet Marketing Leaders and Innovators, along with people from Starbucks, Twitter and Volkswagon, which I think is pretty neat. Like Elle Woods, I am a Gemini-vegetarian (that's about where the similarities end). Let's connect: Check out my full bio, Brand Elixir sessions or shoot me a note at crosby@prcouture.com.